Outdoor living spaces have become popular extensions of a house or building for various purposes such as personal relaxation and group entertainment. Such outdoor living spaces are often provided with decorative railing systems for the purpose of providing a barrier, such as in enclosing a pool or a hot tub, or in demarcating the edge of an elevated deck.
Outdoor lighting is an important design element receiving more attention to detail these days as home and building owners seek to effectively make the outdoor living space suitable for its intended purposes at night, yet be aesthetically pleasing. For instance, flood lighting has been used extensively in the past for its practicality. It can illuminate an area at night virtually the same as is in the daytime. However, often a different, more relaxed atmosphere is desired for the outdoor living space at night than what flood lighting can provide.
There is a continued need for improvements in the way that outdoor structures such as railing systems are integrated with accent lighting features to create subtle and dramatic smatterings of lights that effectively light an area, but does so in a mystically beautiful display of lighting. It is to these improvements that the embodiments of the present invention are directed.